I can’t say I’m usually much of a skin care experimenter, but I’ve been playing around with my skin care routine a bit lately. I’m still mostly using the same ingredients (honey, jojoba oil) as before, but in a new way!

So far, the results are stellar.

Watch the video and find out what I’ve been doing!

For those who want the quick summary, I’ve been doing this:

Combining one part Manuka Honey with one part organic jojoba oil and a drop or two of tea tree oil to use as a cleanser. The honey dissolves easily with water, and this generally leaves some jojoba still on the skin. The leftover jojoba oil seems to hydrate my skin perfectly and there is no need for moisturizer.

When I have the time, I like to massage this mixture into my face (like when I would normally wash my face in the morning and evening) and let it sit for a half hour or so prior to rinsing it off with water. I’ve been doing this most days.

It can also help to kill yeast and parasites which improves digestion, and it can also boost your immune system to fight infections!

Coconut Oil is Great for Acne If Used Internally!

My favourite way to use coconut oil is in my cooking. Instead of olive oil, canola oil, or any other random oil, it’s best to use coconut oil – not just because of the health properties, but because it has a very high smoke point.

Many oils (including olive oil) mutate and turn toxic when they are heated to medium or high heats. You don’t want that – damaged, toxic oils can have a very adverse affect on your skin.

However, coconut oil is more stable and can withstand higher heat, leaving you with a much healthier meal.

Okay, great. But what about using it directly on the skin?

Using Coconut Oil on the Face to Treat Acne

I’ve been getting a nutty amount of questions lately in regard to using coconut oil on the face.

This is because there are many a review out there on the internet RAVING about how awesome coconut oil is for their skin. It helps to clear acne, heal wounds, and moisturize their skin to a silky state.

So people want to know from me… is it legit? Should they use it?

To be honest… the answer is NO!

I would definitely have no problem using it as a moisturizer for my body, but I’ve never used it on my face. Frankly, I’m too scared to try it.

While many people love using coconut oil topically, the fact is that it’s very comedogenic (meaning pore clogging). On a scale of one to five, with five being the most comedogenic, coconut oil is a four!

One of the most concrete reasons I’m too freaked out to give it a try is because of some articles that Fran from High on Health posted a while ago about her experiences with coconut oil.

She wrote a post telling people that she was using coconut oil on her face and that it was going well, and that she LOVED IT!

But then she later does a follow up post in which she says it triggered quite a breakout, all her pores became clogged, and it took her skin months to recover. She even calls it a ‘nightmare’.

I’ve actually heard this story a fair few times from others as well.

Everyone Is Different, So….

Then again, no two people’s skin or bodies are exactly alike.

No matter what the product or ingredient (or food for that matter), some will love it, and there will always be people out who happened to have had the worst experience of their life with it.

The thing with coconut oil though is that it’s probably fine… IF you aren’t acne prone, which is why you hear so many wonderful things about it being used a moisturizer.

If you are acne prone (and I assume you are if you are reading my site), then you might have luck with it, but I’d stay away.

And don’t get me wrong… I love using oils in my skin care, just not coconut oil.

However, if you are a braver soul than I and would like to give it a try anyway, absolutely make sure that you are using unrefined, organic, virgin coconut oil. Then if it clogs your pores and breaks you out, you will know it wasn’t the cheap quality or pesticides causing you issues.

What do you think? Have you tried coconut oil on your face? Did you love it? Hate it? If not, would you try it? Or have I freaked you out enough to not touch it?

Last video, I told you all about how to breathe properly – deep and slow, into your belly! Totally relaxing… but what if you’re falling asleep at your desk and can’t resist reaching for that tempting cup of coffee?

Instead, try the stimulating breath that I show you in this video, and you’ll be bopping around in no time!

Most people with acne have gone through the motions of trying everything under the sun, hoping in vain that the next thing – the next product, the next supplement, or the next drug – will be THE thing that is the answer to all of their prayers.

Hey… I am certainly no exception!

I woke up this morning, sat at my computer, and attempted to think of something to write about for today. I started browsing through the folders on my computer and voila! I came across this interesting sort of ‘acne log’ that I had written out at some point or another.

It seems to be an accurate description of the timeline and phases that my acne has gone through (since it started in grade 7) and all the various treatments I tried for it. I don’t even remember when I wrote this out or why – I suppose I was trying to understand something about my acne… gather clues as to its origins, maybe? I thought AHA! Perfect blog post! So I am sharing it with you.

It runs all the way to a month or so before I finally got down to business and took this natural, holistic stuff seriously. The latter parts of the log show me getting increasingly desperate… flitting to from treatment to treatment, desperately trying to find the magic bullet (Sound familiar?). After finally beginning to accept that topical treatments were never going to really do the trick, I switched over my hopes to thinking supplements alongside a mediocre diet might be my saviour.

That’s where the log ends… but what happened afterwards is that I finally decided on a skin care routine that I was satisfied with (the honey and aloe routine that I use to this day), and I stopped resisting how ‘hard’ changing my lifestyle was and just did it.

Deep down I knew there was no magic cure….. but I wanted there to be one.

Letting go of that and accepting a holistic approach is what got me to the clear skin I have today! 🙂

So here it is, word for word:

Grade 7 – Starting getting acne on T-Zone…. I think I just washed my face with Oil Free Acne Wash from Neutrogena which contained Salyclic acid. I assume I probably stressed about my acne a lot.

Grade 10 – 12 – On birth control shot (Depo Provera). Continued to wash my face with Oil Free Acne Wash, but due to hormones in BC, my skin was impeccable

November 2005 – Skin had gotten worse since going off BC in June 2005 (when I graduated high school), but wasn’t ridiculous. Still nothing as immaculate as it had been when I was on BC, which frustrated me. Came across Acne.org, and decided to try Daniel Kern’s method of washing the face, using over the counter benzoyl peroxide treatment, and then moisturizing. However, I never used as much as he recommended because I was lazy.

Jan 2006 – April 2006 (in Sydney, Australia). – Face was okay. BP was somewhat keeping it under control, but I was still getting acne. However, bacne flared up all over my back really badly, which I had never had before at all. I couldn’t really use product or do anything to my back since I couldn’t reach it, so it went untreated.

April 2006 – July 2007 (in South East Asia) – Bacne magically clears up as soon as I leave Sydney and never comes back. For some reason my face is quite immaculate while I’m in Asia, but gets worse as soon as I go back to Australia.

July 2006 – Fall 2007 -. Face kind of under control, although still acne prone. At least satisfied with BP’s performance and simply assume my face would be much worse without it.

September 2007 (living in Victoria)– My face flares up, particularly my chin. My forehead seems to generally be alright, but my chin looks awful. Decide to try candida diet and eating healthy which seems to get my face under control again untiilll……

August 2008 – Flare up again….but still not that bad… acne keeps on keeping on

March 2009 – Flare up again… on chin, and some zits on forehead too, which has usually been pretty clear. Decide to start on Clear for Life’s healthy eating plan (still using benzoyl peroxide, by the by).

August 2009 (Shambhala) – By May or June, my face had completely cleared. From June until August, my face was probably the best it had been since BC. Healthy eating had worked. I went camping every other week, and was shocked to not have any breakouts. Until Shambhala (a big festival near Nelson, BC) was the last straw. I was still drinking green smoothies and trying to eat healthy, but it had definitely slid a bit. Went home from Shambles with two inflamed nodules on my chin and it was downhill from there. The zits just came back, same as they were before, if not worse.

Mid September 2009 – Four years later after starting it, I decided that obviously BP wasn’t doing anything, and that maybe I’d just go without and see what happens. Instead of medication, just use a mild cleanser (Spectrojel) and moisturizer morning and night

Beginning October 2009 – For two weeks after quitting BP, I didn’t break out, and I was shocked. Second week into no medication, and my forehead broke out in little bumps everywhere, so I got scared and decided to try Sulfur as a new medication….. Acnomel. It seemed to clear me at first, and I enjoyed the even skin tone it was giving me, wasn’t as drying as BP. but it didn’t seem to work. I was still getting acne like before. Starting to get desperate.

Mid October 2009 – Decided to take the step and ask the doctor. He ordered me on birth control and gave me a (very expensive) topical called Differin. I got too scared to take the birth control after my experiences with it as a teenager, and after researching the Differin, I just couldn’t take it. I put it on my face a couple times and I started getting intense nodules immediately. Apparently there is an extreme purging period with this as well as giving you a red, dry, sensitive face, and I just couldn’t deal with it – especially on the verge of moving to Vancouver and having to look for jobs.

Mid November 2009 – After a month and a half of Acnomel not working, I decided to go back to BP, except this time one of those *harmonized* systems (ie. where the facewash, BP, moisturizer are all made by the same company)… not Proactiv though… I got desperate and ordered it, but luckily they were out and didn’t send it… this was the Cetaphil system.

Mid November 2009 – Discovered Carly’s Clear and Smooth system and their amazing reviews and promises and got excited and ordered it. They said its best to let your face detox from BP, but I couldn’t bear the idea of no medication until then, so I used Clindymicin Dalacin T solution, which also didn’t really work that well.

Dec 1/09 – Start Carley’s Clear and Smooth with excitement and hope. Discovered that doing the routine was kind of a pain in the ass, but it made my healthy skin in between the acne feel so smooth and nice!

Dec 14/09 – Following Carley’s routine to a T. Skin wasn’t overall better or worse than before (although so smooth!) However, I got a couple of monster volcano zits. I assumed this was a detox of sorts.

Dec 25/09 – As soon as I got over the volcanos, all of a sudden one day on Christmas break, I broke out all over my forehead in the worst breakout I’ve ever had in my entire life – by far.

Jan 2/10 – Begin on the Au Naturel route. After a week, I was still breaking out like I’d never seen before. I always thought I had pretty bad acne, but didn’t realize that I hardly did. This was by far the worst my face had ever looked. Luckily there weren’t any big, big ones, but a million little ones didn’t seem much better. Decided to ditch everything. Wanted to do the caveman no water, no nothing routine to let my face completely heal from years of abuse (what a concept!), but with a breakout like this, I couldn’t bear to not wear a bit of makeup. So I started by not washing my face, and dissolving my makeup with jojoba oil and leaving it on. No washing, no cleanser, no moisturizer, no medication.

Jan 17/10 – Started slowly getting my face wet, and incorporating more of the Oil Cleansing Method (steaming face) instead of just leaving the jojoba to sit there (also adding a bit of vitamin e and safflower oil to the mix). Trying to go minimalistic again though because, I was still breaking out like I had been on Carley’s, (although I haven’t gotten any big inflamed ones. Small ones are frequent but come and go quickly. If one under the surface hurts, it doesn’t seem to surface) wondered if the oil wasn’t good for me. Going back to maybe a quick splash of water in the morning, and going to wash my face with an apple cider vinegar solution in the evenings to get makeup off. Minimalize makeup as much as possible. Maybe do an oil cleanse once a week or something.

Jan 19/10 – After two days on Apple cider vinegar, my face already looks a bit better. But we’ll see. I do pray minimalistic is the answer to my face issues. I just need to be repaired from abusing it, I think. The skin on the rest of my body is so smooth and nice, and no one else in my family seems to have acne issues. I am still getting zits, but its hard to tell which ones are active and which are now just scars left from before.

Jan 26/10 – not working… breaking out like crazy all over my chin now in addition to my forehead. 🙁 Can’t deal with not knowing if what I’m putting on my face is really cleaning the makeup off. Going to start washing with Spectrojel at night. Started taking vega supplement and trying to eat healthy.

Feb 3/10 – Quit Spectrojel, because it was making my face dry. Started complete caveman regimen on forehead. Back to apple cider vinegar on lower half of face and mineral makeup.

I’ve been pretty hard on conventional acne treatments in the past, but I’d like to make something clear.

I don’t think that conventional treatments are the epitome of evil … all the time. They have their place, and they do help many people. As I’ve mentioned many times around the site, I did use benzoyl peroxide on my face for about four years.

I can’t say that it worked that great. I always had acne anyway, despite using it twice a day, every day. And several times, my acne broke through the defenses and got a lot worse than I would like.

To be honest, I have NO Idea to what degree benzoyl peroxide was actually preventing me from getting acne. I was too scared to ever go off it in that four year period, so there was no way to know what kind of state my skin would be in otherwise. It’s benefits could have been completely in my mind. But maybe the acne prevention it provided was real….. I don’t know!

It’s fairly common that people use conventional acne treatments, have them work great for a while, and then later on, they mysteriously, and frustratingly, stop working.

Perhaps your body has just become immune to the treatments. But perhaps it’s because your health has deteriorated in the time that you’ve been covering up your symptoms, and it’s finally managed to stealthily cross the poor health line, army man past the topical border patrol, and bring you right back into acne-ville.

Covering up symptoms and silencing your body’s messages to you is a reason I dislike conventional treatments.

Another reason I dislike them is because in some cases, they make actually make acne worse. They irritate your skin, dry out it out, and actually produce more acne.

And yet another reason I forgo them, is because of the side effects. There are certain acne treatments that I would not recommend anyone EVER go on and those include things like antibiotics and Accutane – these are scary and unhealthy options, even for short term use.

However, I’m here to say – if you want to use conventional topical acne treatments, like benzoyl, or salycylic acid, or whatever else…. do it. THAT IS – if you actually think it’s legitimately helping your skin.

I mean.. honestly, if your conventional treatments were working all that great, you most likely wouldn’t be reading my website, would you? But if you do think that your treatment is helping, but not working miracles, you will probably see some great results from combining it with a healthy lifestyle. My skin did clear up really easily when I was on benzoyl and then made lifestyle changes to go along with it.

But here’s the thing – it’s okay to use them in conjunction with a healthy lifestyle, if you need a little boost… but only if you are planning to use them short term and then let the healthy lifestyle take over. This stuff isn’t safe to be swallowing or slathering on your skin day after day, year after year (including stuff like birth control pills).

So I’m going to be honest – maybe it would be easier for me to keep my skin really clear all the time if I went back to Benzoyl and combined it with my current lifestyle. I have no idea if it really would, but I’m not willing to find out. I know how easy it is to get psychologically attached to our treatments because of the FEAR.

Now that I’m off it, and hey…. the world kept turning….. I’m not going to go back to putting unsafe chemicals on my face day and night and get stuck in that trap.

It’s hard to get out once you’re in it!

In conclusion (didn’t your high school English teacher tell you to never close essays that way? :p ): Go ahead and use conventional treatments with your healthy lifestyle, but think long and hard about it first. Will you ever honestly be able to stop using them?

Disclaimer

I'm not a health care professional. All the information found on this website should be used for informational purposes only and is not intended to replace proper medical advice. Always consult a qualified health care provider before embarking on a health or supplement plan.